Lent: Good Grief.

This is a post about Lent. I’m only a few years into living by the church calendar. I realize that many of my readers aren’t there, and that’s fine. But I also want to shed a little light on the season of Lent and share a little of what I’m learning through it. 

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A few days back I made a statement that I’ve been thinking about. 

“We are dust, but our return to dust is evidence of a major problem.”

I’ve been thinking about this because it’s Lent, the time where we settle into the idea of our mortality. Lent, after all kicks off with an ashen, cross-shaped tattoo on our forehead. The tattoo comes with the words: “You are dust. To dust you shall return.”

A good friend has been saying that “Lent is a time where we learn to grieve.” It’s a time between two statements: 

“You are dust. You’ll be dust again” 

and 

“He is risen.”

This is the perspective of Christian grief. Loved ones die. It ought not be this way and so we wait. And, just as we wait for Easter during Lent, so we wait for the resurrection of the dead on the last day. 

Lent trains us in grief and waiting…